SLURPEE IS BETTER THAN BEER


 Our TV show “Mother Earth’s Weekly Squirms” was on. Elmer, Pasha, Huda, Tamil, and Shamus were eager to quiz me on my recent visit to Earth. They had watched my last interview with Ohama TV (blog January 1, 2011)

 “What was your most striking impression in America?” Pasha began.

“I’ve never seen so many more fat people,” I said. “The Michelle Obama plea for better food discipline doesn’t stick. You can’t sit normally in an aircraft anymore without being pressed out of your seat by fat flaps blubbing underneath or over your arm seats.”

“Isn’t the US Government doing something about that?” Tamil asked.

“The US Government is too occupied with regulating the health care law.”

“But shouldn’t that be in favor of reducing the intake of fats?” Huda asked, herself a dietician at our Mars City Health Clinic.

“I’m afraid not, they are more concerned with making people pay more for health services they won’t get.”

“What are these fat foods they eat?” Huda followed up.

“Giant cheese and pepperoni pizzas almost as large as UFOs, macho cheese hamburger rolls with oil-fried onion rings in-between, large cuts of lasagnas, huge hotdogs with tomato ketchup wrapped in big slabs of dough, piles of French fries loaded with salt, you name it.”

“What are hotdogs?” Pasha wanted to know.

“Long finger-size sausages,” I explained, hoping she wouldn’t pursue the matter.

“But why are they called hotdogs?” she insisted?

“Well, it’s difficult to explain this on family TV, but they resemble a male dog’s desire in the heat time.”

“Oh,” she said, giggling, looking around embarrassed. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked.”

“What else struck you during your stay?” Elmer asked.

“Political discourse has gone out of hand. The left is blaring that the right is destroying America and the right is countering that that’s exactly what the left has been doing.”

“So, no progress in US politics?” Elmer concluded.

“President Obama only held a slurpee summit at the White House with the Republicans, to discuss a roadmap after his drubbing at the November elections.”

“Any results?” Shamus asked.

“I think the Slurpee meeting had more significant results than the beer summit he once had. You remember, when he had to settle that dispute between a policeman in Boston who he said had acted stupidly by correctly arresting one of his friends for disorderly behavior. This time the President got the message. He signed the continuation of the Bush tax cuts, which made good economic sense at this time of distress. I think they should have more slurpee summits.”

“Remind us, what’s slurpee again?” Huda asked.

“A type of shake with lots of calories and no protein, sold in convenience stores and made infamous by Obama’s chief veggie cook, Michelle,” I said, though I wasn’t quite sure if I got that right.

“What was all that trouble we heard about these secrets that were leaked?” Tamil asked.

“You mean that wikkyleaks thing,” I said. “A lot of diplomatic cable gossip was released on the internet by some Swedish loon. Most of it was already known and insignificant. Hillary Clinton, who is Secretary of State, was mad because it put her in the wrong spotlight. But then, diplomats send a lot of nonsense over the wire to justify their existence. The best advice someone gave was if you wikki leaks, plug it.”

“We noticed that Sarah Palin is still in the limelight,” Elmer said. “What’s she up to these days?”

“She is actually standing up quite well against the socialist onslaught and has considerable following. The left is trying to kill her off because they see her as a political threat. Since most of America’s media is left, you only hear them constantly nagging about Sarah Palin on TV or in their papers. Others like center-right bloggers, radio talk shows and Fox News are more supportive of her. But the left has successfully made her into a lightning rod which is diminishing her chances for political office.”

“I recall that happened to other American woman in politics,” Shamus said. “Remember Geraldine Ferrara when Walter Mondale chose her as VP? The American press took her to the cleaners.”

“Despite all women’s progress in the USA, women are still fodder for male journalists and even female ones, when they don’t agree with their views,” Pasha found. “Feminists are leftists too.”

“How’s TV reacting to the elections?” Tamil asked.

“The left wing of TV – that’s all the old worn out news agencies – do as if nothing has changed. For them, it’s still Pelosi who’s the head of Government, with Obama sitting in her lap admiring her newest facelift. Fox News is trying to expose their hypocrisy and the Tea Party is roaring in the back. Socialist TV is losing audience and soon they won’t have anyone looking at them anymore except liberals and illiterate sports fans who don’t give a hoot about the rest anyway.”

“What about Europe,” Shamus asked. “Last time we spoke it was in sheer shambles.”

“It still is, and it won’t be over soon,” I said. “All Governments owe too much money because of their social welfare measures, and there’s only so much borrowing they can do. The richer nations such as Germany are increasingly angry that they have to put up the bill for people like the Irish who drank too much Irish coffee without paying for it.”

“Where do they get their money from?”

“The European Central Bank is funding deficits and so is Germany but they are balking and so, more recently, the Greek, Irish, Spanish and Portuguese government leaders have been seen trying their luck at the slot machines in Monte Carlo.”

“What will happen to the Euro then?”

“The same thing as with the dollar, going down the drain.”

“Will Earth’s economic and financial management ever improve?”

“I can’t see in the future, Shamus, but in fact it’s improving already as economic growth figures are better than a year ago. This means that the business cycle is wriggling its way upward again, as it always does, but it isn’t very visible yet. This is what politicians and their constituencies refuse to understand. They always think, talk and react short term. The best action in a downturn is no action at all. Let it burn out. Granted, the financial meltdown, which could have been prevented by less risky financial policies in the US housing market years before, was severe and it occurred at the same time that the business cycle was at its periodical downside, as happens every seven or eight years. That caused a sudden collapse that needed state intervention by shoring up banking reserves to maintain liquidity. But otherwise, the down turn would correct itself normally. True, some lose their feathers at the bottom because their business acumen was overly optimistic. But many recover and get back to normal if bureaucratic obstacles are removed.”

“So, we shouldn’t be pessimistic for 2011?”

“It all depends who’s mending the store. If the socialists will govern, the private sector, which is still very weak, will be very cautious for lack of confidence. The investment climate will remain subdued. Unemployment will remain on the high side. If Obama cozies up to the right, the investment climate and the business cycle may restore faster. Obama must be thinking about re-election too.”

“How does the center right coalition of Cameron’s conservatives and Nick Clegg’s liberal democrats fare in the UK?” Elmer asked.

“They maintain a policy of strict austerity by severe spending cuts. Their philosophy is to return from spreading the wealth around as Obama said to spreading the pain around, and to improve upward mobility in a sanitized economy. I think that’s the example everyone should follow now, provided they don’t cut too much too fast which slows economic recovery. In the US, it will look more like a stalemate as the conservatives have only the majority in the House and are not in Government. However, they have the finger on the purse and one of the major objectives should remain to cut the healthcare cost and constrain harmful environmental regulations that burden the economy for no good reason. What’s needed is a growth strategy, world-wide, but it’s unlikely that a socialist regime, like the current US administration, can produce one and the UK is too small to generate much momentum.”

“We know that you attended exploratory talks between the Americans and the Russians about possible collaboration to explore Mars from the International Space Station. How did that go?” Tamil asked.

“That’s a crazy idea of some wingnut at NASA. I attended that meeting at the invitation of Omaha TV on the condition I would not have to reveal my dual identity. The Russians don’t have the creativity or innovation for such an undertaking. Besides, the Russian Government and its economic system have turned completely corrupt. A sad state of affairs that shows the deteriorated conditions of Medvedev’s and Putin’s reign. They are more interested in sucking money from their nationalized oil and gas resources. Corruption plays havoc with their economy because of the ensuing price distortions and ill-directed incentives. Don’t bet on it, it won’t happen anytime soon.”

“Is climate change still on the front burner?” Pasha asked.

“Yes, the climate freaks are still at it. They nurture the gains of their innings in the nineties and even though Kyoto, Copenhagen and Cancun didn’t achieve their dreams, they are bent on keeping their early wins. Despite growing skepticism they managed to set up carbon schemes to shuffle money from rich to poor countries. On my way back up I noticed increased sunspot activity, it almost looked like almighty sun had a speckled face. That’s were the origins are. Everybody knows carbon’s a scam but there’s too much money that drives the slot machine. That’s it, a way to control the money flow. Socialists love that and too many good willing idealists fall in their trap.”

“Strife on Mother Earth seems to continue unabated,” Elmer said. “Is there light in the tunnel?”

“I’m afraid not. In Afghanistan, it’s everybody for himself. Temporary gains are for whomever pays more or is better at cutting off limbs and heads. This country is so backward that it will take ages to develop. Waziristan that nobody had heard of ten years ago is on the front page as much as Paris Hilton’s last joint that took her to the rehab. Pakistan is on the brink of collapse because radical Islam is contaminating its political and judicial systems. Israel and the Palestinians continue their bickering while the West is getting impatient with the lack of progress. But everyone wants Israel to make the painful concessions, while Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon are quietly waiting to take over Abbas who’s week, and then drive out Israel with Iran’s help. That’s what the western pacifists forget: it’s not Abbas’s Palestinians Israel is dealing with, but Hamas and Hezbollah supported by Iran and they mean death for Israel. They got a bitter lesson when they gave up Gaza. So, don’t expect a solution there either.”

“Is there not anything Mother Earth can be optimistic about?” asked Pasha.

“America will never turn into a third world nation as the left is saying after the center-right won the last elections. It has a built-in strength to recover, as shown by the Tea Party, much different from other nations. Its technological innovation will continue to outpace other nations, replacing outdated systems that were considered revolutions as recent as five years ago. Businesses and banks, chastened after indulging themselves in reckless gambling and crony capitalism, will return to the ten commandments of financial management and that’s ten times quote “balance your books unadulterated” unquote. This will be followed world-wide. China and India will rebound as markets in America and Europe stabilize in 2011 and other emerging markets such as Brazil and Chili will continue to march forward. As long as regulation is streamlined to support good financial and economic management instead of blocking it, politicians keep their fingers off the pie, and socialist theology is replaced by the sound principles of Adam Smith, the business cycle will restore itself and put Earth back on the road. Those will be the quintessential themes for the 2012 elections in the US as well.”

“Thanks Mars Man, interesting discussion. We have to leave it at that,” Elmer said. “Till next time.”

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